


Darkness

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [110]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Anxiety, Comfort, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Reader-Insert, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25253635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: You have never been able to correctly express yourself when the darkness grows too large and blots out every last scrap of light. But this time, Loki is nearby.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [110]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 11
Kudos: 151





	Darkness

There was no point to anything. Nothing mattered. There was absolutely nothing that you could do to make any kind of meaningful difference in the world, so what was the point in doing anything? You had long since forced yourself to stop paying attention to the news, but social media was a little harder to disconnect from. It was always such a strange mixture: people who’d largely stopped posting because the days were all the same and people whose feeds looked a lot like they normally did because they were trying their hardest to pretend that things were normal. You were mostly in the former camp, and the people in the latter one made you extremely worried about their safety and the safety of those around them. Locking yourself away in your apartment and only going out for the direst of necessities was supposedly good for the people of the city, but it wasn’t doing much for your own mental health.

And Loki was here. Certainly things would have been a lot worse if he weren’t. His presence here meant you had someone to talk to and joke around with. You had someone who would hold you and touch you so sweetly and make you feel less alone. It was entirely possible that his presence in your space was a big reason why it’d taken you so long to sink this far into the muck of depression, but, now that you were sinking, it kind of helped to drag you down.

Because he didn’t deserve to be stuck here. If he hadn’t had to worry about you, he could have stayed in the Tower with a team of superheroes and his brother and just about everything that anyone could ever want. It was a state-of-the-art living facility, with a high-tech gym and a high-tech home theater and gorgeous private living quarters. It was perhaps the closest thing that Earth could provide to the luxurious palace that should have been Loki’s birthright. Before things got bad enough to bring the nation to its knees, Tony had joked with you once, about just having you move into the Tower with Loki, but you’d laughed it off, a little uncomfortable. Because it was just a joke. Because why would someone like you ever need to be in the Tower?

You were stupid. Pointless. Lazy. You didn’t contribute anything to the world, let alone anything of value, and yet your stupid, selfish heart longed for recognition. In those darkest of moments, when your whole body locked up and you found yourself trapped in that whirlwind of mental self-loathing, the loudest voice always laughed at you and asked if you thought you deserved anything more than this. Of course you didn’t. 

In the past, whenever you’d gotten caught up in something like this, there had always been someone nearby who offered to listen. Family, friends, paid therapists: they all asked you to open up and talk about the stuff in your head, but it never helped. The darkness that you felt was bigger than words. It was bigger than any single situation in your life or in the world. Talking about things only made you feel more helpless and more silly, because you were never quite able to _really_ express what was _really_ bothering you, so any advice that anyone tried to offer was always pointless. You’d done more than your share of trying to let people into your head. It only ever frustrated you and gave others an inflated sense of understanding. So, over time, you’d stopped talking about it. You lived with that darkness always perched on your shoulder, digging sharp talons into your skin, and when it grew too heavy to ignore, you shut yourself away with it and focused on how stupid and weak you were being until you could stand up straight again.

Oh, you _knew_ that it wasn’t healthy to do that, but you also knew that the healthy things never helped, so you didn’t really have any other choice.

Things were heavy again. There was an aching, bone-deep exhaustion creeping through you lately. In the mornings, you were loath to get out of bed even as the insistent press of work called to you from your computer in the living room. You could hide from the world in bed, at least for a little while. You could pull the covers over your head and hide your face in your pillow and pretend to sleep for a little while longer. It was childish, sure, and weak, and lazy, but you knew that you were all of those things, so...so what? For a little while, Loki seemed to enjoy your increased laziness. He held you for a long time: mid-morning, late-morning, early-afternoon sunlight spilling into your bedroom. He chatted with you there in bed, often telling you how much he liked being here with you and how much he loved it when you stayed in bed with him. 

But when he started asking after you, you started forcing yourself out of bed earlier and earlier. His arms around your waist would not change how it felt to try—and fail—to put your torment into words. And even if you _could_ do it properly, so what? He was a god, sure, but even he could not merely say a few magic words and make everything okay again. So why bring him down too? So you started dragging yourself out of bed before you were ready to, and slogging through your morning routine, and forcing yourself to drink coffee you didn’t want just to try to wake up enough to get some of your pointless work done.

But you still spent most of your time curled into the couch like you could disappear inside it, just staring blankly at your computer screen. You were picking at your fingers a lot more lately. It was impossible to hide that from Loki, but he had yet to say a word to you about it. Even when you weren’t actively lost in that despair, the pain in your fingertips was a quiet reminder that it was never far away. You couldn’t help but wonder when Loki would give up on you. When would he grow tired enough of all your melodrama to become willing to have that awkward conversation with you. _It’s been great, darling, but truly I must go. I miss my brother. I miss all that expansive open space. I miss_ not _being penned in with an absolute disaster of a Midgardian. I’ll write to you, I promise. Take care!_

Even that was unfair to Loki. You had no doubt that he’d be so much more gentle than that. He’d use his way with words to weave beautiful poetry about how he longed for any amount of space without you in it, and you could not blame him. But your brain was stunted, lately, so maybe that was the best you could do for now. The meanest voice in the back of your mind told you that that was clear proof that he didn’t belong here. If you couldn’t even come up with something that he’d actually say, why was he here in the first place?

You tried not to ask after Thor, or talk about the Tower, but you also didn’t want to _never_ talk about them. You tried to strike a balance—talk enough to show Loki that you wouldn’t blame him for wanting to return, but not enough to make him think that you didn’t want him here. Mostly you wound up cracking jokes-that-weren’t-really-jokes about how much more space he’d have in the Tower, and Loki, ever dutiful, dismissed the thought each time and told you that he was happy here. Still, it was just a matter of time.

Early one afternoon, Loki crept up and snapped your laptop closed. You weren’t working on anything, but you still forced yourself to protest, just to keep up appearances. He pulled your computer off of your lap and held it above his head, like he thought you’d have the energy to fight him for it. 

“I love you,” he said, gazing down at you with sincerity in his eyes. He looked gorgeous as ever, standing in front of you in his comfortable clothes. You let your head tip back to rest against the back of the couch and arched an eyebrow at him.

“But…?” Your heart was sinking all the way into your feet. All of this mental preparation you’d been doing lately and you still weren’t quite ready for this conversation. _I love you, but I’m leaving._

His face was a question. He ducked a little to put your computer on the coffee table and then sat down on the cushion beside you. “No but. Why would there be a but? I love you.”

Ah. Maybe you wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but you couldn’t. There was still something odd about him and the silence he left between you. There was something that was, as yet, unsaid. You turned your head to look at him and gave him your best attempt at a smile. “I love you too.”

He smiled back, and reached out to caress your cheek. “I can see that you’re not well, darling. What can I do?” He didn’t push you to talk about it, and you knew him enough to know that he _wouldn’t_. You heart warmed in your chest, and tears might have welled in your eyes, if you weren’t quite so dead inside already.

You shrugged. “Nothing. It’s all me. My brain.” You could feel his sharp gaze on your face but, try as you might, you could not raise your own eyes any higher than his chin. “I have to be the one to fix it.”

He leaned in to press the tenderest of kisses to your forehead. It made it possible for you to let your eyes slip closed. “I am here. Nod if you understand. I am here forever.”

You forced down your own inclination to correct him—he is here until he can figure out how to tell you he wants to leave—but gave him a faint nod nonetheless. Was it arrogant for someone like to you think that you knew better than someone like him? Would that arrogance be the last straw? If it was, and if it made him leave, was it truly arrogance, or simply...knowledge?

He held your face in his hands and brushed his thumbs across your cheekbones. It felt nice. Some part of you wanted to let out a deep sigh and relax into his touch. Let him catch you. Let him hold you. But that still felt so dangerous. Even knowing what you knew about him, and about how he responded each time you let yourself be that vulnerable in front of him, you were worried. You kept your eyes closed so he couldn’t see the struggle in your eyes.

“Let’s watch a movie,” he said after a long time. “That one that makes you cheer at the end. With the little girl and the faun. And the fairies?”

“Pan’s Labyrinth?” It was a dark film, and terribly sad the whole way through, but he was right: you always cheered at the end, when Vidal finally got what was coming to him. In times like these, maybe it did you good to see stuff like that. Evil could not always win, even when it looked like it already had. Loki smiled and nodded, tilting your head up a little so he could kiss you. You let him. When he felt you lean into him, his lips curled slightly, into a soft smile that felt like a reward. He did that so often. It was like he knew the risks and dangers associated with letting someone else in—of course he knew _that—_ and so, when you did the same for him, he wanted to praise you. Your eyes burned. Perhaps you were not yet as dead inside as you’d feared. He didn’t pull away even when the first hot tear burned its way down your cheek, nor when you reached out to cling to his shirt. When he broke the kiss, he pressed his forehead to yours and mumbled things to you in a language you could not fully understand. 

After a long, long time, you pulled away from him and did your best to smile at him. You feared the worst: feared that, when he saw your tears he would demand that you tell him what was wrong. You should have known better. He settled himself among the cushions and then held out his arm to invite you in. You did not resist, despite the way the darkness told you you didn’t deserve this. You set things up and then leaned in to him. He slung his arm around your shoulders like it belonged there, like _you_ belonged _here_ , and pressed a thousand gentle kisses to the side of your head as you watched Ofelia step into a terrifying new world.


End file.
